This application claims the benefit of Japanese Patent Applications No.11-234979 filed Aug. 23, 1999 and No.2000-245987 filed Aug. 14, 2000, in the Japanese Patent Office, the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to image processing methods, image processing apparatuses and image processing systems, and more particularly to an image processing method which automatically carries out an electronic filing when using an image reading function, an image recording function, an image copying function and an image communicating function, and an image processing apparatus and an image processing system which employ such an image processing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, image processing apparatuses which process image data which is obtained by electrically converting a document image, include a scanner for outputting the image data of the document image which is read, a facsimile machine for transmitting and receiving the image data, and a printer for plotting or printing the image data. Recently, a digital image processing apparatus has also be proposed, which includes a plurality of kinds of functions, including the functions of the scanner, the facsimile machine and the printer.
This type of multi-function image processing apparatus is proposed in a Japanese Published Patent Application No.8-15299, for example. This proposed multi-function image processing apparatus is capable of simultaneously carrying out a document copy operation and a facsimile communication operation, that is, parallel processes.
The documents which are processed in such image processing apparatuses, include important documents (including documents with images and characters) which need to be stored, and documents which have the possibility of being used in the future. However, a storage location is required to store such documents in the paper form, and it is difficult to search for a desired document from the documents stored in the paper form. On the other hand, the recent improvements in the processing speed and quality of data processing techniques as well as the realization of inexpensive storage units having large storage capacities, a so-called electronic filing apparatus has been proposed to electronically file the documents. The electronic filing apparatus reads the document by the scanner to obtain the image data, and the image data is stored in the storage unit having the large storage capacity.
In the conventional image processing apparatuses, however, the image data is obtained by electrically converting the document image, but the image data is lost after the processing of the image data is completed. For this reason, in order to store the image data in the electronic filing apparatus, it is necessary to read the document again by the scanner, thereby putting a load on the user in that the user must carry out this troublesome operation.